Some of you may have, at one point or another, bemoaned the unfair
state of commercial games for those of us who prefer not to us
proprietary operating system. Some of you may even have that dirty
little secret Hasefroch partition you dust off every once in a while
in order to play those commercial games that don't work acceptably
under wine (and yes, I speak from experience).
I've heard personally, a few times, the inability to play top-tier
games on Linux cited as the main reason someone wouldn't switch.
A buddy of mine, Matthew, is determined to change this woeful lack of
Linux support by the gaming industry. He runs
<http://www.linuxgamingworld.com>, which is a project/site dedicated
to drumming up interest in commercial games for Linux, both from Linux
users who are traditionally averse to paying for software, and from
game companies who traditionally ignore Linux as a market for their
products. You may have heard him getting interviewed recently on The
Linux Link Tech Show and The Linux Action Show.
Apart from the advocacy work they do, they have a pretty complete
catalog of the titles that ARE available to those of the penguin
persuasion on their site.
Anyhow, he asked me to put the word out here that they've teamed up
with My Game Company (it's not mine, that's just their name) to give
away some Linux game goodness by lottery to anyone who's interested
enough to sign up on the linuxgamingworld.com site and who leave a
comment on the following post:
<http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/?q=node/219>
The game they're giving away is pretty neat game, "Dirk Dashing:
Secret Agent", a family-friendly kids-oriented game (but then, that
doesn't mean it's not fun for kids-at-heart) that I heard reviewed on
Linux and Games Entertainment Weekly (yes, LaGER) and downloaded the
demo version myself. It's a pretty fun side-scroller reminiscent in
style to the old Ninja Gaiden series (except with all non-lethal
weapons ;-) ).
So if you're interested, go for it.
The games question is one of the most controversial in the FLOSS
world, because it's the main area that those of us with a deep
aversion to proprietary software will sometimes break down and
compromise our ideals for the quality games that the open source model
has yet to deliver.
I'm not talking about software quality here, an area open source
naturally excels at, I'm talking about content: story, graphics,
music, general coherence, the whole package. In order to deliver the
seamless excellence of a top-tier game, you need writers, graphic
artists, musicians, actors, etc. and you need them to work in a
sustained and coordinated manner which means paying them. So far a
workable business model to support this hasn't materialized, though we
can hope that someday it will.
In the meantime, the only way we'll get "top-tier" games on Linux is
to convince the industry that we're worth considering as a worthwhile
market while they're deciding what platforms to support with their
next game. That's only going to happen if the companies currently
marketing games to Linux make enough of a profit to keep doing so.
I hope this finds you all having a great evening!
Simón
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